Disabled Killed in N. Korea: Defector
By Jack Kim, Reuters News Agency
In Toronto Star March 23 2006


SOUL—North Korea has no people with physical disabilities because they
are killed almost as soon as they are born, a physician who defected 
from the communist state said yesterday.

Ri Kwang-chol, who fled to the South last year, told a forum of rights
activists that the practice of killing newborns was widespread but denied
he himself took part in it.

“There are no people with physical defects in North Korea,” Ri told members
of the New Right Union.

He said babies born with physical disabilities were killed in infancy in 
hospitals or in homes and were quickly buried.

The practice is encouraged by the state, Ri said, as a way of purifying the 
masses and eliminating people who might be considered “different”.

The group urged the South Korean government to change course away from 
“silent diplomacy” and immediately begin taking action to pressure the 
North to improve its human rights record.

The South Korean government has refused to join international condemnation 
of human rights abuses in the North our of concern that such a move could 
rattle ties with Pyongyang, which considers any criticism of its human rights 
as deeply offensive.

“The government should stop trying to avoid upsetting Kim Jong-il,” said 
another defector, Kim Young-sun, 67, referring to North Korean leader. 
“It should try to upset Kim Jong-il.”

Kim Young-sun is a survivor of the North’s Yodok prison camp, notorious for 
its forced labor and life sentences for people charged with conspiring
against the Kim Jong-il leadership.

North Korea has called itself a people’s paradise and said criticism of 
its human rights was motivated by the goal of toppling Kim Jong-il.

South Korea has come under fire from human rights groups and some countries 
for abstaining in votes on United Nations measures to condemn the North’s
human rights record.